"But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort." (Harold Pinter)

Category: Diary

The clouds came with the giant moon, as if to hide us, humans, from the glare of its pitiless light. At the corner of our street workers rush home, to warmth, love and a well deserved rest. Friday night is for joy, dancing, the smiles of lovers, the hopes of poets, and, later, as ghosts start roaming the quieter streets, the shadow of Faust…

Bless be the City, and be pardoned those, who believe in the right of man to walk alongside the gods.

We love the cobbled streets, the antique gas lamps. The older city still resists the onslaught of developers and speculators, the “Gentrifizierung” brigade, and it has allies. Yesterday, cycling our way from the Alex to Kollwitzplatz, and the charms of Prenzlauer Berg, we admired the contrasts, the moving groups, the bon-chic-bon-genre façon Berlin. And we enjoyed the ice-cream…

Closer home, back in proletarian Wedding, the new city remains loyal to its history, its heroes, and through the rumble of traffic, its wonderful parks and small lanes, its lakes. This the rough and tumble life of a city that has now grown back to its population of 1944: yes, 1944.

So, we too, remember 2001 and the victims, on the day, and ever since, of the wars that followed. Bless the cities that are reborn from the ruins.

Maybe one day we will miss the fog, the infernal traffic, the idiotic media, the inept politics… Of course, you might say it’s the same over there. I smile. It can’t be, and even if it were I long for the new, not the old.

We want to ride through the tree-lined streets, in a city where riding is the way to see, to go places. We want to visit the angels, the memorials to heroes, all the history of centuries past, to hear their tales, their longing too. We want to buy our meals at the corner of busy lanes, on markets overflowing with the richness of the South, sit in small cafés listening to jazz, building in our minds a limitless future.

In my street the only trace of the Mauer is the brass inscription on the pavement. All round everything is new: Berlin is being rebuilt, or renovated, but trees also are planted, here in Mitte, and elsewhere in this fascinating city. In the evening a fine rain started, veiling the profile of the television tower, built in the DDR days, and one the vantage points of the city (I prefer the monument to the victories of 1814-15 in Viktoria Park.)

I went earlier in an exploration of the centre, from the Columbiadamm in Tempelhof, the Alte Jacobsstraße, in Kreuzberg, to Seestraße in Wedding. To get a sense of who the city really is, one has to walk, or cycle. There is a lot of this in perspective…

Landmarks, in stone or time, are everywhere. 17 June, the Landwehr Kanal, Museeumsinsel, Kennedy’s speech at the Schöneberg Rathaus… An eagle still stands proudly on the façade of the old airport building in Tempelhof, on Luftbrückeplatz…

The rain falls, ceaselessly, ruining the roses, saturating the mild air of a rotten English summer… Soon we’ll be able to grow rice in the garden, and forget about cutting the hay for weeks to come.

Yet the fight continues. We have to continue the search, avoiding the traps laid out by greed and stupidity. Not that the outcome will change much. “They” will still be there, with their pump and ceremonies, their tax vultures, their “experts”, and, of course, their oligarchs masquerading as politicians, or is it the reverse?

Yet we have hope. I know the City awaits us, observing, amused, the signs of struggle…

Planning a move is exciting, and also threatening. So much can go awry, the unexpected lurks at every corner. We have inhabited this parcel of suburbia for a long time, longer than we originally thought, for sure. And, now, we are about to leave this bit of the funny island for the city of Faust, right in the middle!

We found, hopefully, the place, where to live, to dream, to love, to write… and to wander. More than a room, with a view. All the signs are there: the path through the urban, and ancient, gardens, the waterfall, the dark, deep waters of the canal… the bikes everywhere.

Not far is the river, the few remnants of the old wall, the new shiny skyscrapers: the fight with the Devil, who’s alive, and determined. The new book has a title, and a hero, more mature, a little bruised, and loving it. There is a diary to keep, and the photoblog.

In the meantime, we still have the city of Moloch, to enjoy. Later, we’ll be back. Peace.

I know they are there, well hidden, but making sure I am aware of their presence, just in case I was about to forget. This is tyranny, being on an apparent lose leach, but one that can be shortened at no notice: suddenly the pain, the endless despair.

I see a glimmer of blue in the sky. No frost last night. There is hope in the air.

How long will it take? I know they are expert at rearguard actions too. Signs of withdrawal can be deceptive! Like this weather, it can move swiftly back to ice and doom.

They land in waves, silent and lethal. It starts with this crippling feeling in the arms, the shoulders, then the vice at the back of the neck. The throat is soon paralysed, breathing becomes a struggle.

Soon the only respite is sleep, assisted by Codeine. Their numbers are beyond mathematics: maleficent molecules to the end of the world… They need no rest.

But where do they come from? They resist everything, there is no treatment, only time.

The world smells and tastes different: one is inhabited, the alien bodies have taken charge. Their weapons, suffocation and pain, a diluted slow death.

Each morning begs the question: when will they withdraw? But they are in no hurry. The host, weakened into lethargy, is powerless, the flesh submissive.